Achievement Standards

Achievement Standards

TOUCHING THE EARTH: HOW CAN WE EXPLORE A PERSONAL CONNECTION TO PLACE AND HOME? Year 5 and 6 Visual Art

Creating personal art using hands with earth-paint sourced from student’s homes: Exploring the significance of place and personalised art expression.

Firstly, invite an Aboriginal community member to join the class and participate in the exercise. You can do this via the ASK program or you may already know someone in your community.

ACHIEVEMENT STANDARDS

Visual Art Year 5 and 6

  • By the end of Year 6, students explain how ideas are represented in artworks they make and view. They describe the influences of artworks and practices from different cultures, times and places on their art making.
  • Students use visual conventions and visual arts practices to express a personal view in their artworks. They demonstrate different techniques and processes in planning and making artworks. They describe how the display of artworks enhances meaning for an audience.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cross-Curriculum Priority – Visual Art Year 5 and 6

  • Students’ exploration of traditional and contemporary artworks by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples provides insight into the way the relationships between People, Culture and Country/Place for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples can be conveyed through the arts, their expression in living communities, and the way these build Identity.

Visual Art Years 5 and 6 Band Description

  • In Years 5 and 6, students draw on artworks from a range of cultures, times and locations. They explore the arts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and of the Asia region and learn that they are used for different purposes.
  • As they make and respond to the arts, students explore meaning and interpretation, and social and cultural contexts of the arts. They evaluate the use of forms and elements in artworks they make and observe

In Visual Arts, students:

  • develop understanding of use and application of visual conventions as they develop conceptual and representational skills
  • test and innovate with properties and qualities of available materials, techniques, technologies and processes, combining two or more visual arts forms to test the boundaries of representation
  • explore a diversity of ideas, concepts and viewpoints as they make and respond to visual artworks as artists and audiences
  • draw ideas from other artists, artworks, symbol systems, and visual arts practices in other cultures, societies and times
  • extend their understanding of how and why artists, craftspeople and designers realise their ideas through different visual representations, practices, processes and viewpoints.

CONTENT DESCRIPTORS

Visual Art Year 5 and 6

  • Explore ideas and practices used by artists, including practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists, to represent different views, beliefs and opinions (ACAVAM114)
  • Explain how visual arts conventions communicate meaning by comparing artworks from different social, cultural and historical contexts, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artworks (ACAVAR117)

GENERAL CAPABILITIES

Intercultural Understanding

  • Explore and compare cultural knowledge, beliefs and practices
  • Develop respect for cultural diversity
  • Consider and develop multiple perspectives
  • Reflect on intercultural experiences

Critical and Creative Thinking

  • Identify and clarify information and ideas
  • Organise and process information
  • Consider alternatives
  • Seek solutions and put ideas into action

Personal and Social Capability

  • Appreciate diverse perspectives

Ethical Understanding

  • Examine Values
  • Consider Points of View

CROSS CURRICULUM PRIORITIES

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Histories and Cultures

Process:

Ask students to bring a sample of earth from their home, or a place where they feel ‘at home’ and use the earth, their hands and a variety of materials to create a personal artwork.

Key Questions for Students:

  • Describe the place where you gathered the earth. Did it come from your garden or near the place where you live?
  • Where is your home?
  • What is the significance of that place to you?
  • Are you ‘at home’ in your home?
  • Do you have a special place that you can call home?

Ask the Aboriginal community member, who also brought earth from their home, to talk about their connection to home and place.

Learning Sequence:

Tuning in:

  • Ask students to tell the class about one aspect of their home or garden that is of significance to them.

Finding Out:

  • Mix earth with water to make a paint.
  • Dip hands in the paint and make hand and fingerprints, and footprints, on a range of mediums such as calico, paper and bark.

Concluding/Reflection:

  • In what way are the artworks personal expressions of people, country and place?
  • Are there ways that Aboriginal people have used their bodies and paint from the earth to create personal and lasting messages?
  • What can be learnt from the stories of the Community member who joined the class?
  • Can we pass our knowledge and understanding to other younger students?
  • What can we help them discover about their connection to place?
  • What might Aboriginal people be depicting through their traditional and contemporary use of earth-based materials?

Resources:

  • Earth from students’ home brought in sealed plastic bags or food containers.
  • Water for mixing.
  • Calico, art paper, bark, rocks etc.
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